Acceptance

Accepting your experience in this moment right now implies a particular kind of honesty, presence, and wholeness that can create new perspectives.

This week, you may be sensing a shift in how you are relating to the larger world. You may notice moments of settling or new ability to put pieces together and see a larger picture. Even with the uncertainty and chaos in the present moment, you may also notice for yourself a shift in how you are relating to the world around you as you acknowledge reality.

Joanna’s Story

Joanna had worked for a large tech company for seven years. During this time, Joanna experienced mixed feelings about going to work. Sometimes she struggled with the social atmosphere and feeling undervalued, but generally, she appreciated having a steady job which at times she connected to a sense of purpose. Joanna witnessed several rounds of layoffs at her company, but she kept her head down and did her work with dedication.

At some point when the company was restructuring, Joanna received notice that she was being let go immediately and would no longer be employed there. She was shocked and angry to receive the notice and spent the next several months bitterly ruminating over the injustice of her termination. When Joanna started to feel the discomfort of anger and sadness, she found herself flipping into circular thoughts about how she had been treated and fantasizing about revenge. In this cycle, she neither felt the depths of her pain nor was she able to release and move on. She just could not believe that this had happened to her.

Joanna’s thoughts initially offered her some respite from the discomfort of fully dealing with how she had been treated. Yet avoidance of feeling her feelings prevented Joanna from being able to accept what had happened to her. She could touch into the anger and project it outward but was unable to access the grief that lay beneath it, which kept a large part of her from processing the event and landing in the present moment.

In her mind, Joanna acted – she imagined yelling at her boss or writing brilliant code for a competitor. At first it was helpful to imagine, but as she continued replaying those scenarios, she noticed that it did not help her feel better.

Joanna was stuck with a belief that the event should never have happened, so she was unable to accept that it had.

The Meaning of Acceptance

“It is what it is” – this simple phrase captures the essence of acceptance. Acceptance is a way of acknowledging that something is just the way that it is without holding on to the feeling that it should not be that way. It means that you acknowledge what you know to be true right now and allow yourself to feel what that means to you, even if it is not what you want.

When we want to be somewhere else or be someone that we are not, anxiety results. The feeling of acceptance releases us from the noise of anxiety because we align objective reality with our experience.

This often comes up for people in relation to each other. Your expectations of others may not match how they show up. Maybe you continue an unhealthy friendship because you focus only on the potential while ignoring what you know to be true from multiple experiences. When you accept another person’s limitations, that allows you to make choices about what that means to you. You can stop looking to that person to meet a particular need and choose to meet it in other ways and relinquish the disappointment of unmet expectations.

Accepting that another person is the way they are, and that you cannot change that person, releases you from expending endless energy trying to do so or from being disappointed when it doesn’t happen. It gives you the authority to make decisions for yourself based on what you know now. Reconciling your own emotions around mismatches in your expectations can also allow you to open to seeing the person in front of you in a different way, which may reveal new feelings.

Acceptance shifts the feeling we need to control another person, ourselves, or a situation that is beyond our control. I cannot control you, no matter how much I might want to. I cannot even control what emotions come up for me. I may try – opting for distraction, going into my head, or only focusing on one aspect of my experience – but ultimately, those feelings are there and will remain stuck and likely coming out in other ways until they are accepted as being there and felt.

Acceptance is Not…

Intrinsically, acceptance is not agreement or perpetuation. Accepting a feeling or situation does not mean that you are necessarily stuck in it. When you acknowledge a truth, that shifts your relationship to events and allows you to have more agency because you are seeing with clarity and can act in the present.

It may be that you cannot take action to change a situation, but as you recognize what is, you may find that you have more options around how you interact with someone or something, possibly making clear ways to step back, disengage, or to engage in new ways. As you become aware of other elements, you allow in a fuller picture and that provides potential for new points of connection or agency that you had missed while focusing so sharply on the part you did not want to accept.

On the other hand, you may fear accepting something because you think it means that you must act. For example, if you accept that a friend continuously disrespects boundaries you set out, what does that mean for your relationship? Perhaps you avoid really letting yourself feel the impact of that because you don’t want to have to make a change.

Letting yourself acknowledge how you feel during those interactions does not require you to do anything. It simply means that you can be honest with yourself about your own experience. And then, you can see what happens. You may be moved to act from there and you may not, but you give yourself options when you feel the impact of acceptance.

Acceptance does not preclude action, and it does not require action.

Benefits

You may not be able to affect any kind of change regarding a particular person or situation. In that case, acceptance can still bring a physical sense of peace as you release internal struggle or redirect energy. It frees up mental and emotional space of trying to maintain delusion or cognitive dissonance.

Acceptance allows us to:

• Shift from feeling stuck in the past to moving into the present
• Ease internal struggle and rumination
• Release intent to control what we can’t or to alter a projection of our own experience
• Broaden perspective – helps us move from black and white thinking into recognition of nuance and complexity, which offers more points for engagement and flexibility
• Bring about agency as we become aware of options and act from the present moment

The Feeling of Acceptance

It is easy to recognize the idea of acceptance and maybe to understand why it is important. But what does it feel like? What does it actually feel like in your body to accept where you are at this moment?

An embodied sense of acceptance comes from the bottom-up. Although we cannot force it, we can introduce the idea and create structure and practice to support it. There are things we can do to shape an internal landscape where we might experience a moment of acceptance. With recognition of what that state actually is, we grow awareness of how to organically return to it. Over time, a felt sense of acceptance becomes part of our experience. That does not mean that we always have it, but rather that it is accessible, and we can return to it again and again.

There are many great resources for coming into presence and inviting acceptance. Meditation and mindfulness offer pathways to being with what is and releasing preoccupation. If you are moved to practice mindfulness and meditation, that is amazing. For some, a meditation practice can seem daunting, especially if you imagine that they must happen as part of a major change.

Every single moment in your life offers opportunity for acceptance. You can make the decision right now to pause, look around, sense inside, recognize a feeling and accept it.

Perhaps there is a person near you doing something you don’t like. You can choose to accept that they are doing that thing, right here and now. Sense how you feel in relation, sense if there is a feeling underneath that. Maybe there is something you can do to shift how you are in the situation, maybe not. Or maybe in this moment you can pause and notice something that feels good, or solid, or different, or comforting. Maybe you are at work but you want to be home. Maybe you are nervous about seeing someone and feeling uncomfortable. Whatever that is, give yourself just a moment to say “this is how I feel right now, this is how it is.”

Here are some small steps to help you choose acceptance in this moment:

• Find a resource. It could be your dog sitting nearby, a bird chirping, a pillow that you like to hold. Maybe it’s the feeling of the couch beneath you or knowing that you have a friend who cares about you.
• Recognize with honesty. Acknowledge your feelings, maybe multiple feelings, maybe ones that don’t seem to go together but here they are.
• Just notice. Don’t force it. Just gently notice what you notice in this moment.
• Feel the corresponding emotions. Maybe there are many layers. Maybe they don’t feel like they go together. That’s okay, you feel what you feel right now.
• If it feels like too much, that’s totally okay. Come on out of the feeling, however you know how. When you feel resourced again, gently invite yourself back to the feeling. Acceptance can come in a wave, or slowly, moment by moment over time.
• When you can, sit back and relax into the awareness. Perhaps you will find some strength there, in knowing that you can be honest and you can be with what is. Each shift back into acceptance reinforces that neural pathway and makes it easier to return to next time.

Joanna Continued

As the days wore on, Joanna began to feel more stable, and she took steps to look for a new job. The search for employment was difficult, and she often found herself returning to the story in her mind about the injustice she had suffered. At first, it helped her feel more powerful to think about revenge or to make her case to her former supervisor, but she began to recognize that the story was not serving her. It did not right the wrong that had happened, nor did it help her feel better.

Joanna began opening up to some close friends about her experience, and as she did so, she let herself cry and to feel some of the more complex feelings that lay underneath the anger. She began to realize how much of her was living in that awful moment when she received the layoff notice, and as she recognized that and processed those feelings, Joanna started to feel new things. She began to grow excited about some of the new positions she applied for and saw with greater clarity how bored she had actually been at her previous job.

While she still felt a pang of injustice when she thought about her former job, as Joanna accepted the fact that she had been laid off and the way it had occurred, she could feel herself acting from a present state, and in doing so opened herself up to new possibilities. In time, Joanna found a new position that challenged her and in which she recognized she could grow. As she moved into this new position, Joanna was able to feel a part of the culture of her company and to encourage greater respect in the workplace through her interactions.

A Small Practice

You could take a pause right here and now, a momentary breath as you look around and say to yourself, “I am here now.” Sense inside to see how your whole self receives that. Maybe there are feelings that come up. Acknowledge them. If a thought comes in that you’d rather be somewhere else, acknowledge that. You can say to yourself that it would be nice to be there, but you are here now. If your attention floats away, gently bring it back. Feel your feet on the floor. Right here, now.

When you recognize a moment of acceptance, let yourself touch into your full experience with that moment. What sensations do you notice? What emotions are present? Has your vision changed? How about your breath? As you let yourself feel it, know that this is a place you can return to again.